What is Donald Trump thinking? In an appearance on ABC’s The View this week, he once again questioned whether President Obama is an American-born citizen.

“I want him to show his birth certificate,” Trump said. “There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.” It’s the second time in a week that the business mogul has echoed the birther theory that Obama was born overseas.

Until yesterday, no one had called him out on the controversial comments. But Whoopi Goldberg, one of the show’s hosts, is not the kind of woman to hold back and mince words.

“I think that’s the biggest pile of dog mess I’ve heard in ages,” Goldberg said. “It’s not because he’s Black, is it?”

Trump denied that race has anything to do with his uncertainty about the president’s citizenship, but who is he kidding? As Goldberg pointed out, no other president been asked repeatedly to produce a birth certificate.

Clearly Trump’s goal is to appeal to the basest instincts of the Republican Party’s far-right wing. Those are the people who say incendiary things like “We want our country back,” and periodically descend on Washington, D.C., to hold rallies while dressed in costumes reminiscent of an era when Blacks were slaves.

So perhaps what Trump’s really thinking is that he may seriously enter the 2012 presidential race, and that he needs to send a message that he’s willing to do or say anything to get attention, good or bad.

(Photo, from left Ulrich Perrey/Landov, Evan Agostini/PictureGroup)